Leander Paes had a bitter-sweet experience at the Australian Open, sailing into the semi-finals of the mixed doubles but crashing out of men's doubles, in Melbourne, on Wednesday.
The Australian Open title continued to elude the Indian men's doubles specialist as he and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy, seeded third, went down 3-6, 4-6 to the unseeded Croat-Serb combination of Ivo Karlovic and Dusan Vemic at Melbourne Park.
The Indian derived some solace later in the day when he and Zimbabwean Cara Black made it to the mixed doubles semi-finals.
The top seeded pair defeated eight seeds Elena Vesnina of Russia and Israel's Andy Ram 6-4, 6-3 in the quarter-finals.
They will next take on seventh seeds Lisa Raymond of the United States and Wesley Moodie of South Africa.
Paes has won the other three Grand Slam titles but has no Australian Open men's doubles trophy. He was keen to end the drought and arrived for the tournament quite early to acclimatise to the conditions. He even shunned the ATP event in Chennai, choosing to play in the Brisbane tournament instead.
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